by Judith Terzi
& I'm sitting here with my morning
coffee watching a cockatiel
slip tail feathers through his beak. One by
one. The ends have become ragged
with so much preening. "Rumba Poderosa"
by the band Incendio is playing
on a cd. The bird begins to sing along,
dance on his perch. He scurries
to the left, then rushes back to his usual
place in front of his big purple
mirror. You see, he imagines the music
emanates from his constant mirror
buddy. His identical twin. The bird is in love
with his own image. I am in love
with the bird. He sways back & forth to any
music, but especially to a Latin beat.
A rumba. A bolero. A tango. It's a kind
of bird praying, a bird davening,
you might say. While all this sashaying
is going on, a committee is meeting
in a sedate space on the opposite coast.
You could say the nine members
of the committee have been placed in a different
kind of cage. One with carafes of
hot water & coffee, sweet rolls, bottled water.
No ladders, no pinwheels, no miniature
crystal balls. The committee is subpoenaing
witnesses, scratching every surface
for any evidence anywhere data can be found.
The bird is biting its cage bars in between
chirps to "Rumba Poderosa." Rumba of power
in front of his own image that he adores.
I think he's calling me. I hear a wolf whistle
while I'm writing this. "Let's get it
over with," he's saying. "What's the holdup?
A meshuggeneh is on the loose."
Now he's started to preen his feet. He's biting
his nails. The music has stopped. I'm
eating a whole wheat bagel with cream cheese.
I'm having a second cup of Joe.
Judith Terzi is the author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay) as well as of five chapbooks, including If You Spot Your Brother Floating By and Casbah (Kattywompus). Her poetry appears in a wide array of journals and anthologies. A poem, "Ode to Malala Yousafzai," was included on a "Heroines" episode of BBC/Radio 3's "Words and Music." She taught French for many years in Pasadena, California, as well as English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria. A new chapbook, Now, Somehow, will appear later this year.